


Category Ten: Atomic Blast-Off, And Nine Other Days

by beetle



Category: Pineapple Express (2008)
Genre: M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:43:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Rules:<br/>1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.<br/>2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.<br/>3. Write a drabble/ficlet related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!<br/>Do ten of these, then post them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Fandom: Pineapple Express<br/>Character(s): Dale/Saul<br/>Rating: R</p>
            </blockquote>





	Category Ten: Atomic Blast-Off, And Nine Other Days

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I was sober when I stole this.  
> Notes: Set post-movie. Spoilers.

**Abney Park: Dear Ophelia**

  
  
Right now, the world . . . is one big, haunted ferris wheel. Or merry-go-round. Or . . . a barracuda. Or a heat-seeking missile.  
  
“I still don't know what to say when you come up with stuff like that, Saul,” Dale says. He's all red-eyed and bloody. And of course he's still got that piece of his ear missing. Missing from his ear, I mean. But it's not lost. It's in his shirt pocket. It'll scar badass.  
  
“Too right, it will, homes. I just can't believe Ted bit it—couldn't he see piece was already fuckin' shot off?” Red asks from the passenger seat, all distracted. If he doesn't stop fiddling with the radio dials, Bubbe's gonna open a can of whupass. She's the toughest eighty year old I know.  
  
“Heat of the moment, you know. He sure looked sorry after. Hah.” Dale's dark eyes meet mine, and he smiles a little. “You're gonna try to touch my ear again, aren't you?”  
  
When I focus, I can feel myself talking out loud. “The thought had crossed my mind.”  
  
“We already put, like, a french fry there. And bacon and a melon slice. My ear's gonna get infected, and they're gonna have to cut the whole deal off,” he says, trying to scowl, but he's letting me touch his ear, and not swatting my hand away. The edges of the hole are all jagged and bloody and sticky, and for some reason, even though it's gross, I wanna kiss it, and tell Dale it'll be okay. That he's my best friend, and he got part of his ear shot off trying to protect me. That even if that  _wasn't_  how he'd lost it, I don't care if he's missing an ear-bit.  
  
All that comes out it: “Does it still hurt a lot?”  
  
Dale snorts: “All that Pineapple Express in my system? You could probably perform a vasectomy with a dessert spoon and I'd be cruisin'.  
  
“Mmm . . . dessert. Ow,” Red says faintly, just before getting his hand swatted. I'm thinking of something, too, but it ain't dessert.  
  
“Hey, we should crack some windows,” Dale says as I play with his fucked up ear, pushing blood-stiff curls out of the way. He's chuckling. “It smells like shit and raw meat, up in this bitch.”  
  
  


**Nirvana: Lithium**

  
  
“So, Saul.”  
  
I look up from watching a cockroach run itself ragged in a corner of our jail cell. Dale's pouting at the same cockroach, as if he can't understand why it can't do better. Personally, I think the cockroach's problem is two-pronged: laziness and lack of motivation. But I really don't like to judge. I don't know what that cockroach is going through.  
  
“What's up, Buttercup?”  
  
That frown smooths away, and Dale starts to smile a little. Then stops again. “Okay, so, our lawyer says there's a ninety percent chance all the charges'll be dropped—well, most of them. And I was thinking . . . what're you gonna do after this quiets down?”  
  
“Me?” I blink. Then do it again, 'cause what the hell? I'm kinda fidgetty and weird. Been almost a day since I smoked. I don't feel quite right in my skin. Neither does Dale. He keeps crossing and uncrossing his arms, and touching the bandage over his ear. It's weird, but I wanna kiss his bandage.  
  
What? It's not like it's bloody and gross. It's clean, and . . . fragile looking. And I wanna kiss it.  
  
A bandage is totally out of place on Dale Denton, rescuer of hapless drug dealers.  
  
“I dunno . . . deal for Red for awhile? I trust him not to fuck me over. You know. Again. The three of us . . . we came through some shit together.”  
  
“That we did, my friend, that we did.” That hearty laugh, not the high, wheezy, for-real one. “Think he's got a job for me?”  
  
“Absolutely. Though . . . weren't you gonna be a talk radio guy?” He really could. He's got this nice, deep, calming voice, like a radio guy should. The kinda voice you wanna fall asleep to. Maybe while it strokes your hair.  
  
“I dunno. Someday.  _Somehow_.” Dale sighs. The cockroach? Isn't making too much headway getting up that wall. Keeps sliding down on it's cockroach-y butt. This whole, entire jail is sad. I can't wait to leave, though I wish the cockroach luck. “Right now, I'm just a process server.”  
  
“Heh, you're a manservant like Clark Kent is an accountant”   
  
“Wow, okay. But I'm not a manservant, and Clark Kent's not an accountant.”  
  
“Exactly! You're both more than what you seem to be!” In a fit of awesome, the cockroach makes it vertical. I'm so proud, so happy for it, that I just say the first thing that comes out of my mouth. “You and I should deal drugs for Red together.”  
  
“Yeah, right,” Dale snorts, all laughing, and smiling for the first time since we turned ourselves in. I smile and laugh, too, and watch a formerly pathetic-ass cockroach conquer a gray cinderblock wall.  
  
  


**O'Death: Down To Rest**

  
  
When we stumble into Dale's Apartment—mine is still thrashed to hell from Ted's goons, and from the cops—tired and pretty thrashed themselves, Dale gives me the half-assed tour. Which is admittedly the only one I'm in any shape to appreciate.  
  
“I hid the stuff inside my couch. It's a fold-out. So it's flat, but safe. Flatter, now,” Dale notes from his kitchenette as I flop on the couch. Unlike mine, his apartment is pretty basic. One room, kitchenette, bathroom. Limited closet space.  
  
Right now, it's not jail, so it's Shangri-La.  
  
“Saul, don't lay down all covered in jail-stink. Go take a shower, and I'll make us some, uh . . . whatever's in my fridge that isn't moving.”  
  
“Nah, bro, I need to get baked. We both do,” I tell him, since obviously this is something he hasn't yet realized. If I had the strength to levitate off the couch and get my stash. . . .  
  
Suddenly, Dale's hauling me to me feet, and I'm looking into his eyes. He looks like a teddy bear. He always does. Maybe that's why I wanna hug him all the time. Since, like, the first time we met.  
  
“We both stink,” he says, smiling all crooked. His smile makes me feel like Pineapple Express does. Shiveryhotfunmeltflygood.  
  
“You don't smell that bad,” I tell him, even though it's kind of a lie. He stinks like jail, and so do I, but I really don't care. I just wanna lay down with him, smoke a huge-ass bowl with him, and fall asleep with him.  
  
“That's . . . kinda sweet. And fairly alarming. And not gonna happen till the both of us are clean, and have something in our stomachs that isn't jailhouse cuisine. So get goin'.”  
  
Like that, I'm turned around, with a Red-style swat on the ass to propel me toward the shower.  
  
“Fair warning, though . . . I'm kind of a spooner,” Dale calls as the bathroom door snicks shut behind me and I'm suddenly a hell of a lot more awake.  
  
  


**Wild International: One Day As A Lion**

  
  
“You . . . look completely ridiculous.”  
  
Dale flashes another bogus gang sign at me, looking like some big kid playing dress-up in his baggy jeans, wife-beater and multi-colored wind-breaker. God, when he adds the baseball cap—backwards, like it's 1989--I can't stop laughing.  
  
Only some of it's the pot. The rest of it's just Dale. I don't even need to be high, when I'm with him.  
  
And he's laughing, too. Striking pose after pose, till I have to put the roach in the ashtray or simply lose it under my couch.  
  
“I'm gonna be such a fly drug-dealer. Word-up, homey. Yo, yo!” More fake gang signs.  
  
“You're real fuckin' cool,” I tell him, leaning back in my couch. Where he got those huge gold chains from, hung with clocks, medallions, and crucifixes, I don't know. “Bro, did you mug Mr. T. on the way over here?”  
  
“Hah! Nah, I just borrowed some of Red's second-tier jewelry,” he says, adjusting a chain.  
  
“Oh, yeah. I thought that giant, white-gold crucifix looked familiar. Hey, are those rubies?” I ask, gesturing at Jesus's eyes and wound. Dale frowns, holding the crucifix up to examine it closely.  
  
“Nah, just garnets, I think. This  _is_  the second-tier.”  
  
“Ah, true.”  
  
  


**Stone Temple Pilots: Sour Girl**

  
  
Dale spends most evenings at my place, helping me with the sorting, weighing, dealing. Tonight's different, though.  
  
Tonight . . . Angie asked him to meet her after Drama Club lets out. It'll be the first time they've talked in nearly two months and . . . I dunno.  
  
I suppose she's probably bitter, and angry about getting dragged into the whole Ted-wants-to-kill-us mess, but after two months, she's probably realized that Dale didn't do it on purpose. Hell, I realized that right away. And it didn't even matter, because he was my friend, you know? I'd never have abandoned him once I knew he needed help. And certainly not if he was  _my_  boyfriend.  
  
Which is basically what  _she_  did, once it was safe for her to come out of hiding. Just . . . left him hanging. Left him to deal with the pigs, and jail, and the ear-thing all alone.  _I_  would have stuck by him.  
  
I  _did_  stick by him. I would've  _died_  for him, while she was cowering in some motel-room with her dickwad parents.  
  
I dunno. Sometimes, I think I just hate her because she stabbed me in the back with a dirty fork.  
  
Whatever the reason, I can't even stop thinking about it, stop being angry for long enough to weigh and separate the goddamn snicklefrizz properly. Some lucky motherfucker's gonna get more than a dime. Probably that fucker Gebert. And that's all I need, that asshole thinking he's a valued customer and showing up here all the damn ti--  
  
The door buzzes and I nearly drop the frizz on the floor.  
  
Making sure the good stuff's away, and the frizz is rebagged, I pad over to the intercom.  
  
“Who eees eet?” I ask in my best German falsetto because . . . you never know.  
  
After a few seconds, Dale's voice, rumble-y and dj-y comes through on the tinny speaker. “Yo, yo, yo, homey! I've got two six-packs, two cheese lovers, the first season of  _227_  on dvd, and the foreseeable future free. Whazzup?”  
  
Smiling and leaning my head against the wall above the intercom, I let my heart beat fast for a few seconds, just because I like the feeling so much. “On three, fucker. One, two--” I push the button, because Dale always jumps the gun.  
  
When he jogs up to my landing, he's not wearing his day-job suit, but a t-shirt and jeans. He's smiling, and needs a shave. Just the way I like my Dale Dentons.  
  
“One of these days, I gotta get an extra key made,” I say, taking the beer and holding the door open for him.  
  
  


**Breeders: Cannonball**

  
  
“I think I'm gonna throw up,” Dale says, and I laugh, squeezing his hand. It's all sweaty and warm.  
  
“Remember that time you threw up in my printer? And then, Ted's goons nearly killed us a bunch of times because you saw him blow that guy away? And then my apartment smelled like puke forever, because we didn't clean the printer before we went on the run?”  
  
“Yeah, that's not stuff I'd forget. Especially throwing up in your printer, Saul.” Dale almost smiles, and he's got that look in his eyes. The one that means against all the odds, I've taken his mind off something really funky. “You know, even though she was evil, that lady cop was adorable. Like an armed, enraged chipmunk . . . heh, nice diversion, but I'm still kinda nauseas, though.”  
  
“Aw, don't worry, man. You'll do fine. I mean, having a great voice, and something to say is half the battle, right?” I don't think he's noticed we've been holding hands since we got out of his car. All the way through the small radio station lobby, and in the elevator, and all the way here, in this chintzy-ass waiting room. “Anyway, they wouldn't have called you in if they didn't like that demo you sent, right? Right?”  
  
“Guess not,” Dale says, like he's said the thousand other times I asked. Eventually he'll believe it. I hope that eventually comes soon, though, because the station manager's assistant's gesturing like it's time for Dale to go in and work his magic. I stand up when he does, and we kinda hug each other, awkward and weird like it never is, except when we're in public.  
  
“You'll do great,” I whisper in his ear. I don't play with it, though I want to. That's another thing that makes him act all weird in public. In private, like with the hugs, he just leans into it and lets me because, as he says, "you're just really tactile."  
  
“I'll try.”  
  
After the door closes between us, the assistant, a skinny, ice-sculpture of a brunette thaws a little, and even smiles at me.  
  
“You two are such an  _adorable_  couple. Your love is so inspiring,” she says wistfully, like she just saw two bunnies making out. I try to look all embarrassed and flattered. Not that I have to try hard.   
  
“My teddy bear's everything I need, and I'd do anything for him.”  
  
  


**RHCP: Breaking The Girl**

  
  
It ain't the Express, but it sure moves  _us_  along.  
  
Red let us have a sample to test and market, and so far? So far, this shit is the motherfucking  _Nth._  
  
Dale hasn't stopped kissing me since half-way through Season 2 of  _Amen_. Somehow, between a  _”Deacon Fry!”_  and an  _”Ooh, Ruben!”_ , my arm over the back of my couch had turned into my arm around Dale, and Dale half leaning against me had turned into him looking at me, till I looked back, and then his face was, like,  _this_  close. Like all I could see were his eyes, and then all I could see was red-dark on the backs of my eyelids as he kissed me.  
  
It was . . . it  _is_. . . .  
  
Over. But gently, nicely. It's not all jangly, and what-the-fuck? Dale's just looking into my eyes in that amused way he has.  
  
“Wow, so.” He laughs a little, and leans his forehead against mine. He laughs again when I kiss him a little, five or six times. He tastes like Sunny Delight and the most righteous of righteous kine. “What're we gonna tell Red about this stuff? Heh, what're we gonna  _name_  it? 'Makes You Suddenly Gay For Your Best Friend'?”  
  
“Not  _so_  suddenly,” I tell Dale, prepared for anything from awkward back-pedaling, to a complete freak-out. I don't really expect him to sit back, and grab the bong like nothing had happened. He cleans it out and loads it with the usual, pushing the new kine aside like it's laced with cyanide. Or PCP.  
  
I'm out of breath,  _hard_ , and I don't even know what I want him to do, only that it involves less clothing than we have on, and way more skin.  
  
“I couldn't feel my extremities for awhile. So maybe we should call it 'Comfortably Numb',” Dale says, then hits the bong hard. I've always admired his lung capacity. Now, I've got a whole new reason to, though apparently it's not something we'll be doing again, or even talking about. And that's cool. It's completely  _whatever_.  
  
And even if it wasn't, I've been naming weed for years. I can do this shit on automatic. “That's too Floyd. Let's call it . . . Atomic Blast-Off.”  
  
“Sold!” Dale huffs smoke in and out till he coughs, then passes me the bong. I wave him off and start Season 2 again.  
  
  


**The Bravery: Believe**

  
  
“Your face is longer than Jimmy Durante's nose.”  
  
I try to smile. Of course I do, this is  _Bubbe_ , the best grandmother there ever was. For her, I will smile and I will play mah-jong.  
  
I will probably also lose mah-jong, but she gets a kick out of winning.  
  
“You and that boyfriend of yours have a fight?”  
  
I stopped correcting her around the time Dale got that job announcing at the radio station. “Not a fight, just . . . he's not my boyfriend. Um. Anymore.”  
  
Bubbe clucks, picking up a tile. “He was a sweet boy. None too bright, but . . . he loved you. Not something to give up lightly—don't slouch.”  
  
“Sorry.” I sit up straight. Like a proper gentleman. I'm not any such thing, but that doesn't keep Bubbe from trying. Or me from trying, though I only try for her. I'd try for Dale, if he wanted, but he doesn't want that, or anything else from me, lately. Doesn't come around as much, and never to stay. And most days, I don't even get out of bed except for clients.  
  
And fucking Gebert is hanging around more than ever, still asking for shit I don't sell, like percoset and vicodin.  
  
“Was it something  _you_  did, or something  _he_  did?” Bubbe's dark eyes are like lasers, and I can't really keep looking. It feels like she'll see whatever's in me that drove Dale away, and. . . .  
  
I can't lose the only other person I've got.  
  
I play with the buttons on my sleeves. “It . . . neither. We just wanted different things from our, um, relationship.” Like, I want us to be  _in_  an actual relationship, the kind where we kiss, and have sex, and maybe even hold hands in public. And he doesn't. “It didn't work out.”  
  
“My poor baby.” Bubbe's hand covers my own and squeezes. I'm lucky to have her. “You know, when the time is right, Mrs. Demski's grandson Jordan is single, in med school,  _and_  he's Jewish. He comes to visit her around noon, every first and third Sunday of the month. Should you happen to be here on those days.”  
  
“Bubbe. . . .”  
  
She makes a hand-washing gesture and looks innocent. “I'm just saying. When the time's right . . . oh, look! Mah-jong!”  
  
  


**Shiny Toy Guns: You Are The One**

  
  
So, most of my visits with Bubbe don't end like this.  
  
With me dragging some guy I barely know into my apartment, kissing him too hard and squeezing him too hard, because he's complaining about both.  
  
Jordan Demski isn't anyone's dream of manly perfection—he's too thin, too prissy and polished, too . . . metrosexual is the term, I think. He makes me feels scruffy and grimy and imperfect, though I like the way his hands feel on my ass. They're the only parts of him that I can read and understand--the only parts of him that aren't not-what-I-expected.  
  
But I can't  _have_  what I expected, that's become clear. Dale doesn't really come by anymore, not even to buy weed. I see fucking Gebert more than I see my best friend, and it hurts. Even when I'm stoned, even when I've been drinking it just. . . .  
  
It hurts. I don't think I've ever hurt like this before. Even when Dale and I were on the run, and I got hit in the balls, like, five different times.  
  
“Hmm . . . lemme guess, broken-hearted virgin,” Jordan says, all clever and ironic. He pulls me against him, his hands trying to slide down the back of my khakis. He's hard and I'm hard and it feels  _amazing_ , even though I kinda hate him a little. “You're hurting so much, it radiates off you. It's kinda hot.”  
  
Okay, I've had it. He's been like this since we met this afternoon, introduced by two bright-eyed grandmothers with hearts in their eyes. He's nothing but a snotty, cruel, know-it-all--I grew up punching the crap outta kids like him. So I shove him away, and he chuckles, like I'm some kid walking around in grown-up shoes. “Fuck you, asshole—don't laugh at me!”  
  
”Actually,  _I_  top, so I'll be fucking  _you_.” He smiles, all perfect teeth and dimples and squinty grey eyes. He looks like he stepped out of a magazine, and nothing like Dale. I can't tell if that's good or bad. “And I'm laughing  _with_  you, Saul. Sort of. If I was laughing  _at_ you, cutie-pie, I never would've followed you home. So stop pouting, and c'mere.”  
  
He crooks his finger, and even though I still kinda think I'm being laughed at--even though I still kinda hate him--I go over there. I let him kiss me again, and unzip my pants while I back us toward my bedroom.  
  
  


**Travis: As You Are**

  
  
If anything, since Jordan Demski, it's worse. The  _want_.  
  
Now that I know what I'm missing, not only do I want it with Dale, I want it even  _more_. Nothing blunts the craving—not jerking off, not sex with other guys, not smoking, not drinking, not anything. So I kinda stop doing it all.  
  
Saul Silver, rolling straight-edge. The mind boggles.  
  
But I make more money and contacts this way, if only because, having programmed myself for nearly a decade to act this way, I seem high even when I'm not. It gives me an edge, of sorts, looking high without being that way.  
  
I hang around at Red's a lot, though never if I know Dale'll be there. More than once, Red's asked what's going on. Today, he's not taking mumbling and hand-waving as an answer.  
  
“I hang out with one or the other of you, but never the two of you. Not any more. Whatsamatta? Your boyfriend don't like you no mo'?” Red makes his ridiculous pouty-face, and I try to smile and laugh, like I might have six months ago. But I guess I don't do too good a job, because Red claps my back.  
  
“Look, y'all need to talk about whatever unresolved sexual tension y'all have goin' on, because I don't like seein' my two best friends pinin' away over the dick they never got, like some fuckin' chick movie, feel me?”  
  
What I can feel is my eyes opening wide, like they're about to fall out.  
  
“Dale's . . . he's  _pining_?”  
  
Red rolls his eyes. “Yeah, bitch, din'tchoo hear what I just said? He lost, like, twenty pounds, look like he ain't slep' in a month, need a hair-cut—shavin' has clearly become optional-- _and_  he don't smoke no more.” One eyebrow creeps up Red's forehead.  
  
“I thought he just stopped buying from  _me_ ,” I say, feeling like I've been wrapped in wet cotton. Like I have to fight my way out of . . . something, just for the world as I know it to start making sense again. “I figured he was buying straight from you.”  
  
“Please, you know I only deal in weights, motherfu—hey, you forgot your weights, fool!”  
  
I'm already halfway across his front lawn. I can come back for the weights, later. Red's good for it.  
  


*

  
  
I have to ring three times before there's an answer.  
  
“Speak, friend, and enter,” Dale's tinny, familiar voice commands, and if I was stoned, right now I'd be laughing and crying. As it is, I lean on the talk-button, and don't know what to say. Don't even get past the “hey, it's Saul,” before I'm being buzzed up, and I grab for the door quick, because Dale always jumps the gun.  
  
I sprint up five flights of stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator, and when I get to the fifth floor landing, Dale's door is wide open, and Dale is standing in front of the elevator, frowning at the little readout above the doors.  
  
He looks furry, a little gaunt, and like the fucking awesomest thing I ever saw.  
  
“I'm still glad I dipped my pen in your ink,” I call, and he looks over all startled. He really  _is_  growing out his beard, and I wanna tug on it, while I kiss him. And maybe he can tell, because he's grinning, and walking toward me. Doesn't stop till we're so close, I can smell his fabric softener, and he can probably smell the pot I've been knee-deep in.  
  
We look into each other's eyes for a long time, and I don't know what we see there, but we're both grinning bigger than ever. Just before I would've leaned in and kissed him, he closes his eyes, like a man meditating. Stays that way until I kiss him, anyway. A quick peck on the lips. At first, anyway. Then Dale's returning it, and in a way that says there won't be any pretending otherwise, later.  
  
We don't stop till I'm panting and breathless, arms wound around his neck, and he's got one hand on my back, the other on my ass. But he's still making that zen-face, like an enlightened teddy bear.  
  
“Jesus,  _why_  are you making that face, Dale?”  
  
“I'm imagining if you gave me a handjob,” he says, opening his eyes and smiling.


End file.
